THE NE.,W YORKER coldly for a moment. "And wh"lt's the bad news?" he said. SC1tlptilrp Tur1led Loose ABOUT a dozen people were sit- ting on the low wall around Hammarskji>ld Pla7a, at the COIner of Second Avenue and Forty- eventh Street, watching or not watching the sculptures move-office workers on theIr lunch break, building-maintenance 111en, children, an old man eatIng cot- tage cheese flom a container. The sculptures were three large white cy]- indel s, five feet high and three feet in diameter. Each had a concealed under- cdrriage with wheels, automohile bat- teries, and "l noiseless motor th"tt Cdll cd it to move at the rate of two feet a Inin- u te-so slowly that it took people a \vIllle to discover that the cylinder was nlovIng at all. When a cyEnder ran up against a solid object, a switch inside was thrown and the cylinder reversed direction . We knew all this because we were sitting on the wal1 with Robert B reer, who made the sculptures, and who happens to be an old friend of ours. Inside the glass-walled office build- ing at 2 HammarskjÖld Plélza, two smaller Breer sculptures were patrol- ling the lobby, occasionall) blocking the revolving door or one of the elevators. Some people smiled or laughed when this happened, but nobody seemed really surprised. "New York cool," Mr. Bl eer explained. "Nobody wants to get caught reacting." Earlier that morn- ing, he told us, a group of hIgh-school kids, zipping through the plaza on their way sOlllewhere, had paused to beat out a bongo rhythm on all three cylinders. "They're so kInetic themselves they didn't even notice that the things were moving," he said. Heavy wooden beams had been laid down to keep the outdoor sculptures from escaping or falling down the steps to the street level. The doorman of the office building had been afraid that people mIght trip over the bealns. Breer had offered to paint them white, but then HalT) Macklowe, the own- er of the bllliding, had come by and saId that people could trip over white beams as easil) as over blown beams, and maybe the thing to do was to try both and keep d. tally of how 111an) tripped over whIch. Macklowe and his wife, Linda, were responsible for Inaking Halnmdrskjöld Plaza a sculp- ture garden, with changIng exlubitions evel y three months. Breer is the sev- enth sculptor to be exhibited there, and his pieces will be milling around inside and out (except on Sunday and fOI " ;tiIIt , i " "'': ,. " '\' , \ ,,' \,' I' , .,. \ > !" 25 .... " " ,."... ......;... ! , " \ '\ .... . "-' \' J ,,,,;; ......,...,. ) ( -- - " .,p " , '" . ...:"'" .).. ... ';\ tØ* ",'... ' "^""" .. \/tJ1 - ((Remember (Why Johnny Can't Read'? J:iJ?ell, I'rrt Johnny." . eight hours each night, when their bat- telies get recharged) until Septelnbel 21 st. As we watched, a cylinder sidled up to a pretty black girl in a red b]ouse w ho wa sitting on the wall. She pdid no attention untIl it came right up and gra7ed her knee; then she put her head down and giggled. A few moments later, all three sculptures could be seen advancing across the plaza in military formation. Mr. Breer said that what in terested him was not so much their 1110Vement as their constant rearrange- ment of the space. "The presence of these things depends on their unpl e- dictabilitv," he observed Ml. Breer, who was born in De- troit, started out as an abstract painter. He hved in Paris for ten years, 1110ved from painting in to film animation, got married, came back to the States and bought a house in Rockland Count), had four daughters, and began some- time in 1965 to make movIng sculp- ture. We recalled a painting of his that CI ept back and forth on the wall in the samL imperceptible but implacable way. How did all this come about "Well," Ereer saId, "It seemed like an idea that was just ripe with possibilities, and it also seemed like a waJ out of kinetic art, which had become sort of boring by then-a way to get the sculp- ture down off the pedestal and turn it loose. Of course, there was the ques- . tion of whether or not m) stuff could be considered art. Conservative critic') say it isn't art, and avant-garde critics often say the san1e thing That really doesn't bothel Il1C too Inuch, except that I tend to sIl10ke a lot at openings." A young meUl walked act o')s the plaza, placed d "oft-drink Cdn on top of a sculpture, and let it move fiVL feet away before retnevlng it. Another man, walking with determInatIon, and carrying a cane and a shopping bag full of shopping bags, noticed that the large object in his path was 1l10Y- ing; he S1l10te it a blow with his cane and pressf'd on, harely breaking stride. "'^Then something moves," Breer said reflectively, "it loses all respectability as a work of art." We asked whether he was worried about vandalism. "Not much," he said. "If nobody gets after them with spray paint, I ma) have to do it myself" Two cylinders were on a collision course "Look at the shadows cross- . " B O d " Th ' . " Tl lng, reer sal . at s nIce. ley collided gentl), reversed, and hacked off. One of them eventually nudged the old Il1an with the container of cot- tage cheese; hL got up apologetIcally and left. On Second Avenue, the lights changed and the traffic groaned for- ward. A police siren rent what SOl1le people still call the air. Breer's three sculptures moved in single file, discreet- ly and yet unmistakably aware